Is it still a photo?

Over the years my ability to alter, improve, edit and otherwise adjust or “post-process” photographs has improved. I guess that you would expect that. I can remember the days when I first opened Photoshop with a mixture of suspicion and terror. But, I have, particularly these past few years of launching into astro photography, invested significant time in improving my ability to make use of the many extraordinary abilities of this software.

The other night I found myself back at Stonehenge; or, to be more accurate, I drove to Stonehenge. It was my fourth or fifth recent visit there and, yet again, as the sun began to sink below the horizon, the distant clouds conspired to shut off what might have otherwise been a really gorgeous sunset. In the meantime, I had managed to grab a half-decent sky with a wide-angle lens. I had also shot the henge itself at a range of different focal lengths.

The close-in view of the henge, shot at 70mm did not, however, have much of a sky behind it. It also had many people milling around taking selfies and peering wisely at the numerous monoliths as they contemplated the extraordinary feats of ancient Neolithic man.

Long story short, none of the images was especially satisfying, but I did have all the components of a decent shot. I decided, therefore, to combine a wide angle sky with a longer focal length shot of the foreground and the monument itself. I then proceeded to remove the various additional artefacts to create what, for me at least, looked like a pleasing result. Here it is…

So, here’s the rub: Is it still a “photograph”? What is a photograph? Does it matter?

The answer to these questions will vary widely depending upon your point of view. To my mind, I would simply call it a composite image and I feel not the least pang of guilt for having altered it, provided that it is not represented as being something it is not. For me, this is the key point. There is no “right” or “wrong” way of editing an image. There is nothing wrong with combining images together. The key, I believe, is that we are simply honest about what we purport our creations to be.

This is true is a wider sense too. It comes down to integrity and we should apply the same level of integrity to our art as we do in the other areas of our lives. We need to live out, in practice, the values that we project to the world.